TechNote (Archived)

Defining a site that uses PWS/IIS locally and FTP remotely

Dreamweaver UltraDev is no longer supported, and the Dreamweaver UltraDev support center will no longer be actively updated. The functionality available in Dreamweaver UltraDev is available in Dreamweaver, beginning with Dreamweaver MX. Accordingly, we are moving pertinent content to the Dreamweaver support center. Please refer to the Dreamweaver version of this technote: Defining a site that uses PWS/IIS locally and FTP remotely (TechNote 19401).

This TechNote provides a sample site definition to assist Dreamweaver UltraDev 4 users who are using Personal Web Server or a local copy of Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) for development on a Windows operating system, and a remote web server accessed via FTP for production. This site definition will allow you to set up one site in UltraDev to test your web pages on your local web server and your remote web server. With this configuration, you do not need to use an external FTP program or make major changes to your site definition when switching between the local/remote web server.

Note: For the purposes of this TechNote, the term "web server" refers to the software that processes server side code, manages web pages and makes them available to client computers.

Personal Web Server (PWS) can be used on Microsoft Windows 98, Windows ME and Windows NT machines. Windows ME does not come with PWS and is not supported by Microsoft. Windows 2000 Professional Edition machines come with a built-in local version of IIS 5.0. This TechNote only applies to UltraDev for Windows users.

Setting up the Site Definition

From the UltraDev menu, do one of the following:
- Select Site > Define Sites, select your site then click the Edit button.
- Select Site > New Site.
Fill out the Local Info category as follows:
Fill out the Remote Info category as follows:
Fill out the Application Server category appropriately. Select FTP from the Access pop-up menu. UltraDev should automatically populate the Host Directory and URL Prefix fields.
In the Application Server category, select Local/Network from the Access pop-up menu. UltraDev should automatically populate the Remote Folder and URL Prefix fields for the local web server. You should be able to switch the Access pop-up menu back and forth between Local/Network and FTP, and UltraDev should automatically change the appropriate settings.
The site should now be configured for testing on both the local web server and the remote FTP web server. The Access setting will determine which web server is used when you run File > Preview in Browser, or View > Live Data from within UltraDev.

How this Site Definition could be used

Developing your pages and testing on the local web server:

While developing your web pages, set the Access to Local/Network in the Application Server category of the site definition.
In the Site Files window, you do not need to connect to the remote FTP host. If you do not connect, the Remote Folder side should be empty.
Design your pages, and test them with the Live Data view and Preview in Browser. When you run Preview in Browser, the URL should begin with "http://localhost/". This indicates that the local web server is being used to process the page. The "localhost" may also be replaced with "127.0.0.1", your machine name or your machine's static IP address.
Do not worry about uploading (or putting) files to the remote server while in development. Hyperlinks should work correctly for the files on the local web server.

Testing your pages on the remote web server:

Once you are ready to test your pages on the remote server, go into the Application Server category of the site definition and change the Access to FTP.
In the Site Files window, connect to the remote FTP host. Once connected to the remote server, you should see files on the Remote Folder side.
Test your pages with the Live Data view and Preview in Browser. When you run Preview in Browser, the URL should begin with"http://www.yourdomain.com/". This indicates that the remote web server is being used to process the page.
You will need to upload (or put) your files to the remote server in order to test hyperlinks.

Note: Some installations of PWS and IIS, using the above configuration, will give the error "HTTP 404 - File not found" when trying to run Preview in Browser on HTM or HTML files. This appears to be a problem with how some installations of PWS and IIS handle hidden HTML files and only seems to affect a small percentage of PWS and IIS installations. UltraDev uses temporary files when running Preview in Browser (example: "TMPdroq3fjvsc.htm"). These temporary files have a hidden file attribute in Windows.

If your local web server will not allow you to preview HTML files, here are some possible workarounds:

Give all of your web pages .asp, .jsp or .cfm file extensions, even if they are plain HTML files. The HTML pages will work fine without a .htm or .html extension.
Do not use Preview in Browser to test your pages. Type the URL into the browser directly.
If you want to use Preview in Browser, you can replace the TMP file with the actual file name in the browser's URL address field. For example, change "TMPdroq3fjvsc.htm" to "myfile.htm".
Change the Local Root Folder so that it is not in the C:\inetpub\wwwroot folder and is not a virtual directory in PWS or IIS. Doing so will eliminate the benefits of the configuration above.